The Lucent Orinoco product line is the latest incarnation of one of the oldest wireless products on the market. Originally introduced as the WaveLAN WavePoint II, the Lucent Orinoco AP-1000 features a simple user interface, dual radio capability, and excellent diagnostic tools. Lucent offers two versions of the Orinoco World PC Card; the Silver version provides 64-bit encryption, and the Gold version provides 128-bit encryption. Both cards use the same client software, which includes a suite of best-in-class diagnostic and configuration tools. These features in combination helped us in our tough decision to award Lucent an Editors' Choice.

Housed in a flat metal box, the Orinoco AP-1000 has two PC Card slots, a 10/100 Ethernet interface, and a set of four indicator LEDs. The PC Card slots hold one or two Orinoco wireless cards. Lucent also offers a wireless backbone option that allows several Orinoco AP-1000s to communicate with each other via radio, with no Ethernet backbone. This is useful in large areas such as warehouses or retail stores because you can expand the wireless network without running additional cables.

Using Lucent's Windows-based Orinoco AP Manager software, installation and configuration took about ten minutes, making this one of the easiest-to-configure products in our roundup. The AP Manager includes a complete set of diagnostic and signal measurement tools. Lucent also provides an HP OpenView plug-in that allows remote management of multiple Orinoco AP-1000s.

Lucent's client software is easy to install, and it provides some of the best diagnostic and configuration tools of any of the products we tested. When active, the driver displays a small bar-graph signal-strength indicator on the tasktray. A right mouse click on the icon brings up a configuration menu that lets users choose from up to four predefined configuration sets; each set can have its own System ID and WEP key. This is a great feature for people who move among several wireless LANs, since it allows instant reconfiguration on the fly, with no rebooting required. The Lucent Client Configuration Manageralso accessible from the tasktray iconprovides tools to manage the predefined configurations. While its throughput performance was lackluster at 4.24 Mbps (as compared with the Cisco Aironet 350's 6.28 Mbps) the Orinoco AP-1000's many other superb features still allowed it to shine.

Lucent Orinoco AP-1000

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About the Author

Les has been a contributing editor at PC Magazine since 1994 and a frequent contributor since 1990. Before joining PC Magazine, Les was founder and CEO of Crosstalk Communications, developers of the popular Crosstalk data communications program for PCs -- back in the days before the Internet made communications software obsolete. Prior to founding ... See Full Bio

Lucent Orinoco AP-1000

Lucent Orinoco AP-1000

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